


Finish Line

by regenderate



Series: Fanzine Prompts [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:33:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regenderate/pseuds/regenderate
Summary: The minute Graham comes into the console room, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and tucking his cheese-and-pickle sandwich into his jacket pocket, the Doctor jumps up and starts rambling about where they might go today, listing off every place that comes to mind— New Venice Beach, Kriterra, a dwarf planet so small it has no name— places she’s never even remotely wanted to go, but places she’s now considering just because she needs to run.(Thirteen Week Day 2: Run)





	Finish Line

At the age of eight, the young of Gallifrey are invited to look into the time vortex.

Not all choose to take the risk.

Those who do become Time Lords.

But only some can take it.

The Doctor couldn’t.

She saw the vortex, at eight years old, and she ran. And she ran, and she ran, and—

There was nowhere else to run. She was a child, she had no TARDIS, she had no plan.

It’s been two thousand years since then. She made it off Gallifrey, and has had years and years and years of adventures besides. 

She’s still running.

She doesn’t know what she’s running from.

She thought it was Gallifrey, but then Gallifrey was gone, and she just wanted it back. And then when it came back, she realized the Time Lords’ opinions didn’t matter so much to her anymore. 

She’s still running.

Sometimes she thinks she’s running from others, from her friends, from their questions and their stares and their expectations. But she knows that’s not true every time Yaz smiles at her or Ryan tries to show her how to do a fist bump or Graham puts a hand on her shoulder. 

And she still doesn’t know what she’s running from.

It’s not until a particularly difficult adventure that she realizes, sitting in the console room, curled up on the floor, that she’s running away from herself, and she has been for years. She had to make decisions, decisions that could have killed millions but only killed thousands, and she hates herself for them, wants to escape, wants to become someone else, someone not responsible for these things.

She could, she knows. She could follow the fam back to Sheffield, or set up shop on some tiny backwater planet somewhere, and decide she’s never making another decision ever again. It’s just that, well— the Time Lords aren’t exactly active these days, and so if she stops, then there’s no one.

She sits with this realization for a moment. It hurts. It’s always hurt, though, and she just hasn’t always known it’s been hurting— now she knows, she can’t forget, and the pain is so much sharper, but that in and of itself is a sign that it’s always been there, grinding away at the back of her mind.

So she’s been living with it, and she can keep living with it. Good. She has to. She has to keep running, because if she’s still, she’s still with herself.

She barely keeps it together until the others get up. The minute Graham comes into the console room, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and tucking his cheese-and-pickle sandwich into his jacket pocket, the Doctor jumps up and starts rambling about where they might go today, listing off every place that comes to mind— New Venice Beach, Kriterra, a dwarf planet so small it has no name— places she’s never even remotely wanted to go, but places she’s now considering just because she needs to _run_.

They go to a few of them. A couple tourist traps, a couple backwaters, a couple cities. Nothing big happens, which is probably for the best. The Doctor needs a break.   
Until they’re in an art museum on Cea 3, stuck in a crowd, and the Doctor can’t take it anymore. She can’t move, there’s a crowd and she can’t move, can’t breathe, needs to get out, needs to leave. 

She taps Yaz on the shoulder.

“I’m going to go off and see if I can find the toilets,” she says. “Meet you at the other end?”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Yaz asks.

“Nah, I’m all right,” the Doctor says, although her wobbly smile says she’s not all right. 

Yaz, bless her, ignores the wobbly smile and says, “Okay, then,” before turning back to the sculpture they’d all been trying to get a glimpse at. 

The Doctor flees. She pushes through the crowd as fast as she can, elbowing people right and left until she gets to a doorway into an emptier room, and then she walks, not looking where she’s going, towards the next doorway, consumed with the need to leavegetoutrunaway _go_. 

She walks right into someone, between the abstract sculpture and the ancient paintings.

She doesn’t know who it is, she just knows she's got half an apology already out of her mouth before she registers that they haven't backed away, haven't apologized, haven't pushed past her. They're just-- inexplicably, they're holding her, and they whisper— “It’s okay, Doctor.” 

“It’s not,” she says, before she even thinks to ask, “Who are you?”

“Oh, you know me,” the person says, and their voice is a little louder, and it sparks a sort of recognition the Doctor thought was long dead. 

“Rose?” she breathes, her voice high and desperate. “Oh, don’t give me hope, please.”

“It’s not hope,” Rose says. “It’s me.”

The Doctor finally looks up and—

It is her, but it feels like a fever dream, and there are warm arms around her and soft eyes meeting hers and if it’s a dream she doesn’t want to wake up because this is so much better than having to do anything alone.

“I was running,” the Doctor says.

“I thought you were,” Rose agrees.

“How are you here?” the Doctor asks.

“Bad Wolf,” Rose says, smiling. “I’m connected to the TARDIS. Sort of part of her, now. I just didn’t figure it out until I lived out a good long human life without aging and got myself back into the universe with your TARDIS.”

It doesn’t make sense, but somehow it makes perfect sense. 

“Breaking all the rules of time and space,” the Doctor says. “That’s my Rose.”

Rose doesn’t answer that. She just holds the Doctor closer. 

“Run with me?” the Doctor asks, already thinking how much less painful it’ll be with Rose along, balancing her, helping her make the tough decisions, connected to the TARDIS and the Time Vortex and so, so good. It’ll still hurt, but— Rose always made her feel better. Less like she needed to run away from herself and more like she needed to run _to_ the next adventure and run _with_ Rose by her side.

“I’ll always run with you,” Rose says, and the Doctor almost cries right then and there. “I established that years ago. And I’ll stand still with you, too.”

“I wish I could,” the Doctor says into Rose’s shoulder. “Stand still. Go off somewhere with you.”

“I know,” Rose says. “Let’s just settle for seeing the art for now, yeah?”

The Doctor nods against Rose’s jacket, and then she pulls away.

She takes Rose’s hand.

This time, they walk.

**Author's Note:**

> so this is short and makes no sense but i love it anyway and i hope you do too! check out thirteenfanzine on tumblr and twitter for cool stuff


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